Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, Luke 2:13,14

I finished taping the package to send to my daughter and grand girls who are still in Kyoto. There  wasn’t much inside, a tin of cookies I’d baked and some small presents for the girls.   I wanted them to have something special for Christmas because they were very far from home. Nonetheless, it felt heavy, probably from all the butter I’d baked in the cookies.

I literally choked when the usually very congenial Post Mistress   told me the cost. “How much did you say,” I gasped . She looked at me sharply over her glasses. repeated the price and then handed over a long customs form to fill out. The line behind me had grown longer so I stepped out of the way. Of course I hadn’t brought my glasses and how in the world was one supposed to write all the required info on such a tiny printed form. This was not going to be easy and I began wondering why in the world I hadn’t just ordered some goodies from Amazon, shipped directly to Japan. It would have been a LOT cheaper. I quickly squashed such an easy temptation. My daughter and her daughters wouldn’t be getting Oma’s (that would be me…) Kranzl cookies which my mother used to make and her mother’s mother before her. Christmas would not be the same without a tin full of sweet, buttery raspberry filled Kranzl to nosch on during the holidays.

Christmas is not celebrated in Japan. My daughter is in a quandary because the girls attend a Western school and will have a very long Christmas holiday while Lisa who teaches at a university has ongoing classes. They are working all that out. My grand daughters will come home a lot more responsible for themselves after experiencing two very different cultures.

What would it be like not to have Christmas as we know it?   Think of everything we associate with Christmas – decorated evergreen trees, wreaths and ribbons, carols and carolers, brightly wrapped packages under the tree, stockings and gingerbread houses. Think of children’s pageants and choirs singing “Silent Night” while snow falls outside at midnight. Think of   Norman Rockwell illustrations and it’s easy to become nostalgic. Having grown up in a very traditional German family, my childhood Christmas was filled with wonder. I can’t imagine life without a Tannenbaum.

Then again, think about today’s commercialized Christmas and how consumerism has become the economic reason for the season. Think of stores displaying Christmas goods in October, Black Friday, Cyber Saturday, Shop Local   Thursday and all the other days set aside to buy, buy, buy. Listen to all the really bad Christmas songs blaring in every store and restaurant and one quickly concludes   that “less Christmas “ would be most welcome.

The first Christmas in Bethlehem years was vastly different. Christmas today bears no – if any – resemblance to that first Christmas, when Emmanuel came to dwell among men and the heavens rejoiced! A few humble shepherds and their flock paid attention to a poor child born in a cave, but the rest of the world was too occupied with itself. There were no special trees or elves or Kris Kringles carrying presents, no sleigh and reindeer, no one drumming or piping. There was no snow. No one was dancing with a nutcracker; there was no Charley Brown or Grinch or Scrooge. Instead, there was a heavenly host of glorifying, worshiping and exalting angels singing in the heavens about “peace on earth, to men of good will.” It was a majestic choir unlike any ever heard since. Two thousand years ago the United States was centuries in the future as a nation. However, ancient Japan already existed. The angels announced a Savior to them a very long time ago, before Western civilizations developed.

I keep thinking about no Christmas in Japan. It is a Buddhist and Shinto land, has hundreds of festivals, but it does not believe in or celebrate the birth of Jesus. It is a country without a Savior and without God’s greatest gift to human kind, His only begotten Son. We who have received the gift, who believe in Jesus as King of Kings and Lord of Lords are to worship Him alone, particularly in this season when Jesus seems to have gone missing and we must reject the false and ultimately deceptive images created by the world’s version of Christmas. If we don’t honestly question our beloved, closely held traditions and look through them to Jesus Himself, then we’re really no different than the people of Japan. We are a people without Christmas for we’ve lost the Christ.

Friede Gabbert